Our friends at YoYoFactory Russia put together a great look at the 2016 Russian National YoYo Contest. For the contest/history nerds out there, this year was the first year of a new event & organizer being recognized by the IYYF as the “official” Russian national competition. Hooray for progress! Featuring Mark Artsruni, Victor Gravitsky, Chingiz Alpyspayev, Bogdan Bezugliy, and Tasya Ganikhina.

The IYYF has officially recognized the RYC (Russian YoYoing Competition) as the official national yoyo contest of Russia, and the seeding event to the World YoYo Contest. The previously recognized event has been inactive in recent years, and the RYC has proven itself with consistency, quality judging, and high production quality. Congrats! Check out their official statement below.

Dear friends, we are happy to announce the end of the 2016 competitive season in Russia – and our 10th anniversary year with amazing news: RYC is now officially recognised as Russian Nationals by International Yo-Yo Federation. We are extremely thankful to the board and proud to see Russia back on the global scene – it’s a huge step for yoyoing.ru, Russian Yoyoing Federation and the local community. We’d like to thank our friends worldwide, the players and the brands who supported us on this journey – for almost eleven years now.

But the main news for today are these names: we are proud to announce Lazar Medvedev as 2016 Russian National Champion, Ilya Matros finishing second with only 0.4 points difference – and Konstantin Uvarov who took the third place in 1A Division.

We are also happy to name the X-Division Champion, Alex Stein, Nizhny Novgorod city champion, showcasing 4A on the Nationals scene this year.

The fight for the titles was tough; we’d like to thank all the competitors for their dedication, creativity and sportsmanship – and invite you guys to the official event page at yoyoing.ru where the full results are being added right now together with freestyle videos on our YouTube channel.

Thank you guys, it’s been an amazing decade – and stay tuned for more from Russia and yoyoing.ru.

Igor Galiev brings the heat from Moscow in this new video, culled and remixed from unused footage shot during the making of his original Ultimate Dogma video. I’ll never get tired of watching this guy throw. Amazing.

You guys ever notice how good most of the videos out of Russia are? Great filming and editing, great tricks, just really high production quality overall. This is why whenever one pops up in my feed, I always stop and watch it. Always.

And it helps that Yuji and Gennadiy are fantastic yoyo players, so you know they’re going to deliver. Check out the latest from these two, and enjoy!

YoYoFactory Russia has released the final video in their “POV” series, and it’s every bit as fantastic as the rest. Featuring some truly excellent and inspiring tricks from Mikhail Baklanov, this last installment should give you a nice push into the weekend with plenty of new ideas and concepts to try out.

Yoyofficer’s Ilya Shaposhnikov put together a great look at this year’s Russian YoYoing Competition. There is some really good technical play coming out of the Russian scene, and has been for years. The Russian yoyo industry has had some problems finding stability, but there is loads of talent there…great to see a contest really bringing all that talent together!